After the Train Ride
by Gryph1
Summary: Set immediately after the end of Goblet of Fire. Could anything change Draco's mind about Voldemort?


Disclaimer: Draco Malfoy and the Harry Potter realm belong to J.K. Rowling. I'm just borrowing.  
  
This story begins the evening Draco returns home after Goblet of Fire.  
  
~*~  
  
Draco Malfoy crept down the servants' hallway to the kitchen that evening, careful to avoid eye contact with anyone he might come across. His legs were still weak from the Jelly-legs curse, and his ears burned, deepening the purple blotches across his face.  
  
His father had elected to let the curses wear off on their own, as a lesson to him to avoid such scenes in the future. He was always doing things like this; Draco had learned not to complain several years ago, because there was always something to be gained from his father's advice.  
  
Damn Potter and his cronies, he thought bitterly. What was so wrong with him, so wrong that Potter would reject his friendship out-of-hand? He was a Malfoy, and had far better connections in the wizarding world to offer Potter than those poor redheaded Weasels.  
  
He admitted to himself that taunting Potter about Diggory's death might not have been the best way to win him over, even if the boy had only been a Hufflepuff, only good for cannon fodder.  
  
Why did he even care? he asked himself angrily, wiping back a piece of now-purple hair. It was just stupid Potter, and anyway, Potter had set back the Dark Lord for more than a decade, so maybe he wasn't the wisest ally to make, anyway.  
  
When he'd met Potter in Madame Malkin's, the boy had been not only pureblood, but unintimidated by Draco, a refreshing change from Vincent and Gregory, his private goons. There had been potential there. Filching a piece of fruit and eating it slowly in a corner of the kitchen, two voices coming from the dining room caught his interest.  
  
Draco edged closer to the door.  
  
"-don't see why it's so important, Lucius," a sniveling voice said.  
  
"Well, Pettigrew," replied the ominously low voice of Lucius Malfoy, "we must time his awareness of the true situation carefully. He is still too young to understand our cause, too malleable to the words of others. Of course, when I spoke with him several days ago, he knew that the Dark Lord was resurrected, that I bore witness, and that Potter barely escaped intact."  
  
Draco noted that the stranger, Pettigrew, let out a hiss of breath at the word 'Potter.'  
  
"He does not know," continued his father, "that the Potter boy lasted longer than any other being that the Dark Lord has dueled against, and did not escape by sheer dumb luck; this could break his faith in the Dark Lord. After all, he does hold the boy in sheer contempt."  
  
Draco did not notice as the nectarine he had been eating dripped golden juice down his jaw.  
  
"He most certainly must not be told any of the details of the Ceremony of Rebirth," continued Lucius. "After all, though he might never get top grades." Sour disappointment puckered his father's words, and Draco's flush deepened; ".he's not a dull boy, either. A Muggle cemetery, he would ask? Why would the Dark Lord go to a Muggle cemetery to be resurrected?"  
  
"But Lucius, I just-" broke in the whiny voice.  
  
"Wormtail, I know your affinity for children must be high, given the time you spent living with the Weasleys, but kindly do not try to mentor my son!" his father snapped. "He will be inducted when I have seen that he is mentally fit. And right now, I do not feel that he is ready to know that the Dark Lord himself was the bastard of a closed-minded Muggle, or that he was raised in the Muggle world until he received his invitation to Hogwarts!"  
  
The nectarine pit dropped to the floor with a soft, wet thud.  
  
"After all," said Lucius, "he'd have a hard time concealing knowledge like that from other students, much less other Death Eaters, and to mention the Dark Lord's past is the ultimate impertinence."  
  
Draco could hear the scrape on the floor as his father pushed back the chair he had been sitting in and concluded, "He's scarcely fifteen, Pettigrew. Hypocrisy is always held in contempt by the young. He's been warming to the idea of the Dark Lord. I can hardly tell him that it's all a combination of pandering to the class with the money, and delusion or thirst for power to the rest of us. He's a Slytherin; he'll understand in good time."  
  
The muffled brushes of his father's summerweight robes and the click of his boot heels on the marble floor let Draco know when he was gone. The stranger sniveled for a moment before leaving by the front door.  
  
His knees were shaking uncontrollably. He clutched them tighter to his narrow torso. Must be the Jelly-Legs curse. He was covered in nectarine juice, purple, blotchy and weak.  
  
I should go clean up before they find me, he thought numbly. I'm a mess.  
  
He sat on the floor, rocking, long after the voices had faded. 


End file.
